9.11.17

Trump urges China’s Xi to work ‘hard’ and fast on North Korea

US
President Donald Trump (L) and China’s President Xi Jinping shake hands
during a business leaders event at the Great Hall of the People in
Beijing on November 9, 2017. Donald Trump urged Chinese leader Xi
Jinping to work “hard” and act fast to help resolve the North Korean
nuclear crisis, during their meeting in Beijing on November 9, warning
that “time is quickly running out”. / AFP PHOTO / Nicolas ASFOURI

Donald Trump urged Chinese leader Xi Jinping to work hard and act
fast to help resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis during talks in
Beijing Thursday, warning that “time is quickly running out”.
Speaking on the second day of a trip to Beijing marked by pomp and
pageantry, Trump also decried China’s “one-sided and unfair” trade
surplus with the United States but told Xi “I don’t blame China”, as the
two countries signed more than $250 billion in business deals.
Xi hosted Trump at the imposing Great Hall of the People, next to
Tiananmen Square, for the main event of the US president’s five-nation
tour of Asia.

While the two leaders exchanged pleasantries in keeping with their
professed friendship — with Trump calling Xi a “very special man” — the
former property magnate made clear that he expected China to do more to
rein in North Korea.
“We must act fast. And hopefully China will act faster and more
effectively on this problem than anyone,” Trump said, while thanking Xi
for his efforts to restrict trade with Pyongyang.
“China can fix this problem easily and quickly, and I am calling on
China and your great president to hopefully work on it very hard,” the
US leader said.
“I know one thing about your president: If he works on it hard, it will happen. There’s no doubt about it.”
The US administration thinks China’s economic leverage over North
Korea is the key to strong-arming Pyongyang into halting its nuclear
weapons and missile programmes.
Xi said the two countries reiterated their “firm commitment” to the
denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the implementation of UN
resolutions.
He also repeated his plea for the issue to be resolved through
negotiations, saying China was ready to discuss the “pathway leading to
enduring peace and stability on the peninsula”.
Though China has backed UN sanctions, US officials want Chinese
authorities to clamp down on unauthorised trade along the North Korean
border.
But experts doubt China will take the kind of steps that Trump wants,
such as halting crude oil exports to the North. Beijing fears that
squeezing Pyongyang too hard could cause the regime to collapse.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there are signs that
sanctions are “creating some stress within the North Korean economy” but
that Xi told Trump they could take “a little while” to have an effect.
Trump, who may meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at an APEC
summit in Vietnam on Friday, also urged Russia to “help rein in this
potentially very tragic situation”.Trade
Washington has made no secret of its frustration at China’s massive
trade surplus with the United States, but at a signing ceremony for over
$250 billion in US-Chinese business deals — including $37 billion worth
of planes from Boeing — Trump said he did not blame Beijing.
“After all, who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the sake of its citizens?”
However, he pointed the blame at past US administrations “for
allowing this out-of-control trade deficit to take place and to grow”.
The Trump administration has aggressively pursued trade remedies in
commercial relations with Beijing — investigating Chinese trade
practices on intellectual property and in aluminium and steel.
“There has been some friction on bilateral trade,” Xi said. “But on
the basis of win-win cooperation, we hope we can solve these issues in a
consultative way”.
While US and Chinese officials played up the deals, several of them
were nonbinding memorandums of understanding, which can take years to
materialise or never become firm contracts.
Tillerson downplayed the outcome of the trade talks: “Quite frankly,
in the grand scheme … the things that have been achieved so far are
pretty small”. ‘Beautiful welcome’
The trip comes as Trump faces the lowest approval ratings for a US
president in seven decades, and with the one-year anniversary of his
election Wednesday spoiled by big Democrat wins in state and mayoral
votes.
Xi, by contrast, cemented his status as the most powerful Chinese
leader in a generation at a Communist Party congress last month, when
his name was inscribed into the constitution.
On Trump’s first state visit to China, a military band played the US
and Chinese anthems, ceremonial cannon fire erupted, and the two leaders
reviewed a military honour guard just across from Tiananmen Square —
the site of the army’s deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in
1989.
Children waved US and Chinese flags at the two leaders, a day after Xi treated Trump to a tour of the Forbidden City.
“Emphasising pomp over substance is the Chinese way. With President
Trump, they think that the state-visit plus treatment will impress him
and buy China some goodwill,” Bonnie Glaser, China expert at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told AFP.
Trump circumvented China’s internet censorship system to thank China
for the “beautiful welcome” in a message to Xi on Twitter, which is
banned in the country.

Both leaders say they have struck up a friendship since Trump hosted
Xi for a plush visit at the billionaire’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida
for their first meeting in April.
“My feeling toward you is an incredibly warm one. As we said there’s
great chemistry and I think we’re going to do tremendous things for both
China and the United States,” Trump told Xi.
Despite the public bonhomie, Chinese history expert Sam Crane said the “flattery will not have significant substantive effect.”